The Swinging 60's and the Rise of Women
- Apr 17, 2019
- 4 min read
It was a trip down memory lane to visit the excellent Mary Quant exhibition at the V&A with friends this Easter holiday. Mary Quant defined the young, playful look of the 1960's and everything I saw resonated with my teenage years. From the daisy logo to the iconic clothing I revisited my youth! It was even better to visit with a group of friends who included Quant's niece, a colleague and friend of mine.
Until the mid 1950's London was a bombsite, rationing had only come to an end in 1954 and the world was still grey. Only the rich, the 'Establishment' set the fashion which was little changed since the war. Debutantes or 'debs' as they were known were presented at Court until 1958. Into this grey, very formal world, burst the young, vibrant designer, Mary Quant who was to become an international ambassador for British fashion. She became synonymous with the swinging 60's though she actually opened her first boutique Bazaar in the King's Road in 1955. Mary said 'I hated the clothes the way they were.. I wanted clothes that were much more for life, much more for real people, much more for being young and alive in'.
The 1960's saw the growing affluence and social mobility of young people benefiting from further education and higher wages. Shopping for clothes became a leisure activity and I well remember my shopping trip for clothes when I got my first job - in London's Oxford Street no less! Though I doubt mine was Mary Quant (more likely C&A), this simple 'suit' in the exhibition was very like one I wore to work in 1970, minus the tie!
At the beginning of 1966 a new 'humorous, catchy, sing-along number was released by Pye Records. It's title was Dedicated Follower of Fashion and it was sung by the Kinks.
It reached number two in the singles charts. The song painted a portrait of a trendy young thing, who 'flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly' and its timing was perfect. A few months later, reflecting on the cultural changes that had affected British life, a young Jonathan Aitken declared that the 'fashion revolution was the most significant influence on the mood and mores of the younger generation' (White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook). As he saw it the designers, photographers and models of the mid-sixties had become the 'new folk heroes and heroines of contemporary London'. They personified the values that Aitken associated with the 'swinging' scene: wealth, sex appeal, fame, youth, talent, novelty and quick success; and they embodied the 'new spirit' of Harold Wilson's Britain: democratic, dynamic and, above all, modern.
From the formal, often floral and fussy, designs of the 1940's and 1950's, Mary Quant took fashion for women into simpler, cleaner lines. She borrowed ideas from the city gent look and the school pinafores we had all worn, camping it up into fun, relaxed garments. They had witty and sometimes irreverent names from the professions and the establishment, such as 'Byron', 'Barrister' and 'Bank of England'. Young women went mad for them and Quant's designs spread far and wide, being copied by the high street and forming the core of a working girl's wardrobe.
By the time Quant's second boutique, designed by Terence Conran, opened in Knightsbridge in 1957, she had already acquired a reputation for stylish informality. But it was 'the shock of the knee' which caused outrage. By the mid 1960's the mini-skirt had arrived and hemlines were up. I wasn't the only girl whose father was horrified at the length of my skirt and I still remember rolling up our school uniform well above the "maximum 4" above the floor when kneeling"!
Mary Quant became a whole 'look': accessories, shoes, stockings and tights, PVC boots and bag and latterly makeup. The Mary Quant brand with the distinctive daisy logo became affordable, light makeup for girls, most unlike the heavy, classic brands worn by our mothers. I was fortunate to have one of these lovely yellow make-up boxes as my mother worked at the Gala Cosmetics factory in the 1960's.
Mary Quant personified women's liberation though, as she said herself: "I didn't have time to wait for women's lib". It was a time of growing activism and struggle for equal rights. The Ford sewing machinists' strike which took place in 1968 over equal pay for women was made into a successful film Made in Dagenham and led to the Equal Pay Act 1970.
Mary credited her King's Road customers as her inspiration and the ones leading the feminist rebellion. In 1967 she described the young as 'prototypes of a whole new race of women... it's their questioning attitude that makes them important and different'.
It is strange to think that this part of my youth is now very much social history. To read more about this fascinating time and with a whole chapter on Mary Quant, I would highly recommend Dominic Sandbrook's White Heat: 1964-70 a history of Britain in the Swinging Sixties.
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